(And Those Eisenhower Dollars? Classic.)

So sleepiness may be a symptom of depression but it's also a symptom of sleep deprivation, and, now that I think about it... yeah my schedule's been messed up for the past weekish, and, maybe just, became my new normal. Staying awake at night is just something that kind of happens with me. Pulled a couple of all-nighters though, definitely not normal, about a week ago... would there be enough time for my body to readjust though? 

It's mostly little naps. Less than an hour but feeling like a lot longer.

Anyway jobsville: checking my online application, which remember had previously had my application successful but the assessment failed out of nowhere; now the application is disappeared entirely, which means I can re-apply I guess and retake the assessment... only, as the job I'd had has obviously been gobbled up in the month I've been gone, it's like re-apply to what? It's true that it does allow you to apply for a position and let you sit on it until it opens up, but at this point... at this point, it really sucks but it'd be a lot quicker to find work elsewhere. rrrg... 's blows.

But I'm no expert. Maybe they're holding something, and it's invisible, or something.

Head Trip

My brain chemistry's been super messed up these last few days. It's a personal problem. All I can do is sleep or ignore it, or confront my anxieties head-on, although no matter how illogical I discover my anxieties to be of course it won't soothe them. Still feels like I'm doing something at least.

Got no idea what I'm going to do a video on this weekend. I'll think of something. Meanwhile also have to keep up my streak of social media on other sites. Phew.

Mixed Change and Metaphors

gosh DANG IT WHAT WAS I GOING TO SAY

sommink about socks i think...

It was really cool but ultimately trivial anyway, something filler writing as I cleared my head. I think a lot of things, and write a lot of things, and even though important wheels got turned today I'm not sure if this is the venue for that. Setting the ball rolling is the hardest part. I'm juggling some stuff, rolling it downhill. There's a far better mixed metaphor in there somewhere but OHP I REMEMBER WHAT IT IS

my teeth don't hurt as much anymore; Easter basically destroyed my teeth with all those jelly beans. Reagan is far from my favorite president even out of the Republicans, but the dude had awesome taste in candy and that makes him tough to dislike.

Grant, Grant was a cool dude. We don't use the $50 nearly enough anymore...

It's Got a Weather App and Everything

But golly my new phone is really quite something. I'd been going to say more but then I got distracted by the Wikipedia article on Shakers and ran out of time. God is both man and woman, and yet we should remain celibate? or God is both man and woman THEREFORE we should remain celibate? still trying to figure that one out...

April Vlog Up

Pretty sure I had more to say initially, like maybe talk bts shop or something, but if that be the case then I'm totally spanking. Um, spacing, / blanking.

I do think this is one of my best thumbnails though. The first vlog thumbnail that isn't just a literal screenshot with the title pasted over it. (I did fudge October 2018's thumbnail a bit. The camera wasn't that far to the right, I just moved the screenshot over a scoach and mirrored the background to hide the edges of the frame.) Had to make a couple of compromises when the thumbnail turned out narrower than I expected, but it still looks swell I think.

A Brand New World

It honestly doesn't feel like the same world anymore.

(The Toronto Star is an Excellent Publication of Crack Journalism)

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2019/04/28/how-an-abuse-victims-nerve-and-a-hidden-iphone-led-to-the-arrest-of-a-sundance-founder.html

'Nuther One

(title unrelated)

Cooking something up. What is it? In the oven. No I said what not where. It's something. Really quite something.

Not that much of anything at all though really.

The Beatles' The Beatles (White Album) is one of those timeless, like, timeless albums. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Feels like it was written five seconds ago, you know? Every time is the first time.

Torn! Tooorrn!

I'm not sure whether I want to look up spoilers to Avengers: Endgame or not. It's not like I've been avoiding any trailers or fan theories or anything, but now that it's out (it comes out Friday which is code for Thursday and in some places that's now code for Wednesday) I'm like, well... I really don't know.

Guess I'm avoiding Rise of Skywalker spoilers this year meanwhile. I watched the trailer and everything, but after that I was all: shoot maybe I shouldn't have done that. So that's as far as I'm allowing it to go.

Far From Home, though? I don't know either. I watched the trailer(s?) for that as well, but Homecoming was the original one I went out of my way not to spoil. (and still got spoiled for me anyway a little bit... stupid "trailers spoil too much" YouTube video essay, really I was practically asking for it...)

Addams Family Reunion ISN'T the Name of a Real Addams Family Movie; Guess that VHS I Saw Was Just an Actual Reunion Video and EDIT It Turns Out I Was Wrong Just Nobody Talks About It Much Because Technically It's Only the Pilot Movie to The New Addams Family Show

This has already been out and I thought I'd commented on it but going through the archives it turns out I hadn't???

But if I were to make a list of every single reason I love the Addams Family it would take an infinite amount of time, because just like all of it, so YOU BETTER NOT MESS THIS ONE UP GUYS.

Also, s c o o b y d o o c r o s s o v e r p l e a s e

(second edit: sweet one does exist, part of the New Scooby Doo Movies from back in '72. Also, what the heck "New" series? giving me everything I've ever wanted but then being so obscure I don't hear of these till now?)

HTMLMANKLAUSMAJORLROOMMINORSORTLROOMSECTION7CLROOMWEDGE

So the spam comments that I, just, decided to leave up, I decided to, just, check their links today because of course they have links. (The comment preview doesn't show links so you have to check out the comment directly.)

The first link is some hardware store website that returns a 404 (pasted as title.)

The second is an unsecure website and a little more interesting.

Into Your System. "Your system has been hacked by Shadow_TN #Hacked" and copy/pasting the html reveals that there's also apparently some sort of animation effect applied to the text?

(my system wasn't really hacked by Shadow_TN.)

I'm thinking though it may be some sort of test or something...?

<<span style="animation: blurFadeIn 3s ease-in 9s 1 normal backwards running; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 0px 1px;">>

opening up about religious belief can be hard sometimes.

https://youtu.be/f6gIRkrpLs4

This is definitely one that could use a Pretzelize Me Cap'n! blog to go alongside it. I'll write one up tomorrow.

(y'all)

JENNIFER y'all LOVE y'all HEWITT y'all AND y'ally'all SARAH y'all JESSICA y'all PARKER y'all ARE  y'all TWO y'all DIFFERENT y'all PEOPLE y'all. Are they both considered horses? SJP is; JLH being someone else makes sense since I've never thought of her as being particularly equine. And what's going on?

what 👏is👏 going👏 on👏

(complicated political legacies y'all)

Alright so I think I know what I'm going to do for my video this weekend.

(I really think I'm doing better though in a lot of aspects of my life. Better than what, I don't know. Average, I guess. It's not quite up to "my best life" standards, but, I'm feeling good about a lot of things. Still no word back from Walmart about anything, and honestly I'd be fine whatever way they dictate. Writing some solid chonking posts on this blog over the last few days, that's nice.)

I am going to need... PEEPS.

(Should be Posting)-->?

I'd possibly be posting more on other social media sites if things were easier- but that's probably just an excuse; if I'm not into a habit I'm not into a habit. And I have very few habits, good or bad. Which is good and bad.

• I don't know my facebook password and I could reset it easily but I don't, and I'm logged in on my kindle so it's fine. Only where's my kindle? Lost it somewhere in my room as I was cleaning/rearranging it; it had been on top of a storage bin but I moved the bin and it slid off and poofed.
• And my wordpress is hard to get to. On my laptop, but I hardly use it because its battery can't charge so it has to be plugged in for me to use it, and I'm logged into wordpress on a different account than the one I generally use for pinterest and stuff. Once again an easy fix but it's nothing that important to me though maybe it should be?
• Don't know where my phone is ofc. There's places I could start looking but if I ask Dad about who would know who was there on the night it disappeared he'd just tell me it'd be easier to get a new phone, and so I don't ask, and so I continue not having a phone. (If I went inside then I would've might-as-well change clothes, and if I did that I might-as-well helped out outside, so I didn't and just stayed outside, and then went inside and didn't change into workclothes but went outside and helped anyway, and then when it came dinnertime I didn't want to stop working.) And what would I do with a phone, if I had it would I instagram art? Do I art in the first place that much or am I distracted by other things?

Who needs this many devices? Who needs them just to not use them? Who needs the social media?; besides the idea being it's good for brand.

Frankly I'm not really sure what I want out of my social media presence. A following?, but I wouldn't have anything to do with it really. Society just sort of tells me that fame is an end in itself, and it's like ok sure.

There's so much it would be easy to do. I'd probably be able to scrape in a few bucks a month if I wrote just a weird little book and published it digitally. But the book would need to be good or worthy of my time writing it or whatever so my desire for greatness keeps me from it. 

Though the greatness only comes in the polish, I've learned already from making YouTube videos even though I haven't really made anything that great from it. At least there I'm making things for the joy of it (alongside ofc a tangled host of other reasons that help press me through the nonjoyous times at least.)

There's that at least and it feels good to be doing that but there are other things I'm not doing, and letting myself be held back on. Like I'm always WAITING for the freedom to do the thing, because it's really going to take up such a large chunk of my time in the doing that I'd be glad I'd had a whole week's worth of hours set aside that one afternoon.

But afternoons aren't that long.

So I like play videogames instead or whatever.

Nothin's Ever Gonna Change

I'm not sure what's going on, or what's going to go on, or something. Latest update in the job saga, the application process has changed since I applied, so I need(ed?) to apply again? Only the assessment looks, re-failed. Even though I'd passed it earlier. So: could that have something to do with the change in process? Or: is the failure from this end, all an illusion somehow? It's a very strange saga.

On the positive side, my paycheck went through last payday, so I have been fairly compensated for the three-odd days of work that I managed to get in. On the negative side GAS IS SO EXPENSIVE, MAN. But I was able to fill up all the way today. Before the complications arose, of course. (I knew that I'd be getting a call today about my reapplication status; just never figured that the status would be: yes, you do have to reapply.)

And reapply to what?, meanwhile: the position I'd had doesn't show up as being open, looking at it. From one account, at least. I think it went through from the other, though. (Having two application accounts, after failing the assessment the first time. Passing by a narrowish margin from the second account, though once again, of course, both accounts' application's assessments say failed.)

So I don't know if I still need to do something, or can do anything. But it could always be worse, it's not like I'm going to starve without this job.

Our Lady

Paris is a hale city. She lives long. I remember what I was doing when I learned about 9/11 (waking up?) and I'll probably remember what I was doing when I heard about the fire as well. (Learning about 9/11?)

urgghhh I'm always just so late, not just "so late" but "just so" late. since I don't have to rush this anymore, getting it posted midnight the day after, I might as well go into more detail.

(Had the idea today *well yesterday, I schedule the posts beforehand which give me motivation to go in there and at least get something, before it just posts up as blank. And also allow me to polish.)

Late today (though I knew I'd probably be posting on this) because I was doing an extra helping of Duolingo, getting through an entire level of French on the topic of Paris. See what they had to say, see what's mentioned in the lesson. Notre Dame est dans le premier arrondissement. The Eiffel Tower is in the, what, seventh, eighth?

Also played on the latest Overwatch map, Paris, today? Not sure where exactly that takes place in the city, geographically. Somewhere on the Seine. You can see the Eiffel Tower from it.

I don't know. The 9/11 stuff I was learning about had to do with society's reaction to it in our arts, the impossibility of traversing that fine line between paying appropriate respect to tragedy, in a monetizable form, vs actually profiteering off it. Not that these tragedies are all that comparable; it's just something I'm struck by, via coincidence in time and space.

When I was a little kid I didn't really give a crap about people living way the heck off in New York, but I care about this.

Untangling Unicorn Store

https://youtu.be/lMY3uo3tQUQ

(i keep on wanna write "untanglish" every time; is that even a word? what a droll time!)

Too Much or Not Enough Break

I've got tomorrow's video, like, written for the most part, or whatever, but shooting it is kind of stressful because of all the gaps that aren't written that I just have to like ad lib my way through, and also the image isn't turning out like it is in my head, and also I just want to go to bed, but I know I'll thank myself massively if I just get my crap done sooner rather than later. But I still need a break.

So I'm writing this.

So Sō anyway; went to this concert this evening instead of filming, and I really don't want to talk about this right now either, but there's not much that I want to do right now. But a lot that I want done.

The thing about percussion especially is that there's nothing there to hold the audience's hand, not much structure either so it's tough to gauge how far into a piece you are just by listening to it. Everyone in the audience is left to their own interpretation of meaning, everyone experiences the same thing but thinks their own thoughts about it. There's a story there, but everyone has to tell it to themselves. Structure is what one wants it to be.

What Next?

I'm really not sure how I'm going to top last video, but whatever I choose I need to do so soon in order to get it shot and edited in time. If I were more decisive this wouldn't be so tough and I wouldn't waste- like, all evening I've just been passing time, not really doing anything deliberately, and that could improve.

Duo

I lost my Duolingo streak again a couple of days ago- too busy editing my video together; always seems to happen. But it was the smallest streak and thus the smallest loss so far.

Apparently you can take these quizzes to skip ahead levels on lessons though, is something I discovered today. And you get 20 points from doing one, instead of the just 10 you get from completing a normal lesson.

Analyzing "16 Reasons" Woo

So far Alex is the only (not-me) person who's watched the video, but he really really liked it and so like, what do I do with this? Today's been a kind of weird day for me You Tube-wise, you know that feel when you're browsing YouTube and you just lose hope for humanity and the platform, and you forget what drew you to the platform so much in the first place? But there is good worthwhile stuff out there, possibly even in the vapid lifestyle vlogs who knows. I haven't facebooked in, well since 2018 I think, but maybe I should share this on Facebook and get more feedback or whatever? But I have friend(s) who also have tried that with their YouTube stuff, and I was totally indifferent myself to their own movie opinions videos. So I don't know.

16 Reasons Why I'd Totally Marry the Joker Trailer

https://youtu.be/ViXwP31pMEE

Technically Fired Technically

Okay so today would have been my first workday since Sunday but- I mean I did go in today but not to work- turns out there was a problem with the I-9 form (I figured having to do with the part where you need to provide two forms of identification but that wasn't it.) What it would up being was something like this: that my social security number on the form didn't match my real SSN; it didn't flag it earlier because it was also the wrong SSN from my application. They couldn't fix it itself, apparently, and so what needed to happen was this: that I be let go, and rehired under a new corrected application. There were some steps of this process that can only be started tomorrow at the earliest, so I couldn't go in to work today.

I mean I've been really torn over do I even like my job, I like the milk part of it but there's also eggs involved and that's rough, not to mention a host of other expectations they don't tell you about, and, the pay's not fantastic but it's the highest wage I've ever earned, and, am I going to be stuck doing this forever, and, the work's alright but the schedule is terrifying especially because I'm so used to being free, and even so it'd be nice to have a bit more wriggle room and/or the foreknowledge of exactly which days I'd be working more than a couple of weeks out, and how likely is it that time off would be approved...

But I wanted to go into work today anyway, even though I couldn't, so I guess that answers that question.

Analyzing Vlog Woo

I don't know why but my latest vlog is getting any hits which is weird? I've been designing my thumbnails at 1/10th size for the past couple of days, making sure they're easily readable, could be it. Also, two of the hits were mine. The thumbnail has me with an open mouth in it, which seems more inviting and clickable? 

I'd been going to talk about this on Pretzelize Me Cap'n instead but I'm talking about it here, but looking back on it, the background music in this one was a mistake. Having watched it with and without music, music definitely helps keep interest up, but I think the particular choice in music was too down-tempo, though having tried speeding it up felt too frantic. Could have tried it sped less, but whatever, you don't care.

Each of these videos I'm treating like it'll be "the one," and I'll gain a follower base or whatever. Same with the posts on Pretzelize Me!, which is why I guess I don't post there as often as I should. The first step in making good art is the willingness to make bad art, and so I guess I'm willing to make this boring blog post, because I'm making anything at all, building my skillset up. Same idea with weekly videos ofc. But sort of balancing the improvement, with the idea that it'd be the one.

New Vlog Woo

https://youtu.be/t1eSvkUdGug

New (Sun)Day Coming Up

It feels like I'm missing something important before I go to bed but I think I'm just being paranoid. But what if I'm not? Analysing my feelings I think it's just anxiety over having to go to church early tomorrow. Pretty sure I have everything I need done. DuoLingo, scripture study.

I got tomorrow's vlog in early, shot and edited it and it's uploading to YouTube now and scheduled to go live in 24 hours. I'm working tomorrow; my schedule is all kinds (alright, one or two kinds) of jacked up. The days I have off each week don't seem to be consistent. And also my hours overrun play rehearsal. 

Since it's something I enjoy, and something that helps, I see my work as a Good thing, and it's lawful to do Good on the sabbath. It's still counting as work, I'm still getting paid; I was thinking and praying (and heck tomorrow's Fast Sunday I could do that too though I already feel good about this) that if I ever have to work on the Sabbath, like, all my paycheck for that day I'll donate as Fast Offering or something.

Anyway, as midnight draws nearer the better I feel that I didn't miss anything. I kind of have to.

kisskillya

apparently the tv show Detention is on iTunes- it's been almost impossible to find up till this point, very little support or information available online, but all thirteen episodes are there. still unsure if this is a show i remember from my childhood- the design of the school hallways matches for sure, as does the vague timeframe (it aired between 1999 and 2000.) And though episode synopses and the like from my scant internet resources had seemed in opposition to more fantastical plots, the iTunes previews of the episodes reveal that the show seems to have a lot of imagine spots, which makes sense.

Cartoon show, Science Court-era, takes place at a school and follows this group of friends. I hope it’s not Detention, because that show is impossible to find, but it might be. The floor is literally made of lava in one episode, perhaps due to virtual reality? And so they have to walk along the tops of the lockers, or along this ledge along the lockers, and encounter Indiana Jones-style booby traps. Something about an evil wheelchair-bound kid living in the boiler room in the basement, who turns out to be just misunderstood? And perhaps he’s got a big henchperson to do his bidding for him, I don’t know.

One Month minus a coupla days since I'm just learning about this now

April 26th is going to be exciting because you know what happens? mountain goats are coming out with a new album. Already have a couple of songs out - so good!- their best stuff since, the last stuff they came out with, really.

Cell Phone Saga Dwindling to an End

Finally coming into contact with the last house this afternoon, no phone turning up there, I guess that makes it official that my cell phone is officially not misplaced but lost. Though actually hol' up, is there a list of all the people who showed up to the Christmas pageant meeting? Doesn't even have to be an official one, just an informal one will do, like asking, "hey do you remember who all was there?" I'm not sure if my new job would ever need to communicate to me via text or not; nobody calls me as it is so I haven't been terribly put out over it, and I'm out of service probably by now anyway so even if I had my phone it would cost money I don't have if I wanted any service. (I'd still be able to Pinterest and stuff but I can and do do that from my laptop.)

I guess I'm just proud. Or maybe I don't replace my phone because I can't afford it; yeah that might be it.

Questions on Forgettable Media

So I had job orientation today and got there a little late though I tried to get there early, but it really didn't matter so I don't even need to go into it. What I want to talk about instead is forgotten (and even remembered) films and video releases from the olden times of, like, thirty years ago. Who's going to remember them? Do we have the obligation to remember them? I also think about crappy shoestring independent movies a lot as well- why do they love child actors so much? Is that the one experience these writer/directors all have, just childhood? Children's movies too, low-budget ones. The music is actually kind of catchy, but still recognizably bad- how so, and what makes music so recognizable as such?

Streak Losses

urgh and I lost my 23-day streak due to the uploading of the video; that's how I lost my 120 day streak at the start of the month...

Not as big a disappointment as that one of course, but more needless still; I knew I had to get my duo done but refrained in case it took up too much bandwidth or something and slowed down the video upload?

Seem to be on a streak actually uploading videos now though; that's two and next Sunday I still have this month's vlog to do. Wonder what that'll be about...

Strokes for Everyone!: Wonder Park, the Coma of the Author and the Future of Animation

Is the title a bit grandiose? Probs. Does it make you want to click it? Absolutes.

Half a Power Outage?

So I'd meant to get a bunch of work in today on the computer but the power shut off while I was out and away, parts of the house's power selectively and leaving the other parts untouched. Like, kitchen? Lights are working, outlets are working. Computer room? Lights are working but the outlets aren't. No electricity in my bedroom at all. 

I just had to drag an extension cord to plug into an outlet in the other room, in order to get the computer on so that I could continue my project. It's going on pretty well.

Dreams (Literal) and Changes (Figurative)

My dreams have been particularly vivid these last couple of nights. It's funny; that's all it seems to take to make my life feel significant enough to keep pressing through it. The only thing that's necessary is to make a day feel important, and string those together.

It's taken a week but it looks like my background check has finally gone through and I'm hireable. It's probably going to be just like any other thing. Never sure if anything is going to change/change me, but I've lived with change long enough by now to hopefully be able to tell how things are going to go along.

Now I Almost Actually Understand How People Who Hate the Last Jedi Feel Almost

Watching Incredibles 1 and 2 back-to-back is a terrible idea and I don't recommend it unless you want to get mad. Positives though:

• You can pretend (and heck maybe it was deliberate) that it's some kind of commentary on comic book time, stories that happen over days or weeks taking months to complete while always being set in the "present" (you know what comic book time is.) People reminiscing over events that took place only a few days ago, as though they happened 14 years ago? Sure, deliberate! Because comic book time!
• The advancement in technology means that the sequel can be subtle where the original went super stylized. The two don't always mesh, but there are good things that can come out of it. The lighting values in 2 are exquisite. There's some pretty good lighting in the first one but 2 just blows it out of the water in that regard.
• Now I kinda get what TLJ haters are getting at, like something's totally ignoring everything that's coming before? I don't feel that way about the Star Wars movie of course, but I'd be mad too if they actually did that.

New Video!

HOW GOOD IS PIE LIKE SERIOUSLY

Mmmmight as well.

Apparently it's Pie day today. Had some seriously amazingly good pie today.

The fact of the Pushing Daisies marathon also today is complete coincidence; it's something I've been watching lately anyway.

2019 Disillusions

Is it weird that it's 2019? It's weird that it's 2019. Year seems so... temporally displaced. Like, 2016 was an eternity ago, 2020 is this weird future thing that's never going to arrive, 2019 feeling like it shouldn't have arrived. And it's just so weird.

And it's March already. ...?!

And I'm thinking about jobs (and I don't have any yet) but with the snags with the Walmart stuff it's got me thinking whether I really want to work there, thinking whether I even want a job at all, and why would I want I job, so that I can buy things? I don't want to buy things. Capitalism seems kind of pointless to me now, me being so far outside of it.

And everything else it feels like I'm outside of that all too. I want to want things, but I just can't bring myself to. Nothing seems real to me. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

Spider-Man Saves the Evening

I wanted to go to bed a couple of hours ago but I wanted to get a blog post done first, but I didn't want to write anything because the only thing I would be able to write about is how it feels like I've hit a low point, but I didn't really want to talk about it. I would have gone to bed miserable, had I gone to bed when I'd wanted to.

Now I'm feeling a little better. No small part thanks to Spider-Man. Thank you, Spider-Man.

Actually now that I think about it, I wouldn't have slept straight from that, but would have written some non-blog related stuff, get my life off my chest. Still seems like a good idea.

This Happened

https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/prophet-meets-pope-francis-vatican

Feel the Burn

Exercising with Alex every-ish day for almost a week now, and it still s*cks but it gets easier marginally. And it's called exercise. And in a shortly long story, like, it works because you continue doing it after you'd normally give up, spurring you beyond how you'd do you. You grow because it stretches your comfort zone.

And it's not true 100% of the time, but it is a much more effective method of growth. Maybe. Like, just because it's getting easier doesn't mean I'm really seeing any results yet of course. But, as a general principle, it might be true I suspect? It gets you to places quicker, at least, maybe.

Realizing I don't know for sure is undercutting a lot of my initial point, not to mention the counterexamples I can think of. I'm a pretty good visual artist, but I don't remember ever "arting" past the point where it hurts, things just accumulated gradually, maybe continuing because believing in myself, being told I had skill when in fact I did not? 

Piano, though, exercising there; and writing of course, though I still feel I could use many drills in both. That's the kind of thing I was going to liken to exercise.

Tees Maar Fox

So I was researching Neil Simon, as one does, and it turns out that 

1. he didn't write his first play till he was like 40, which means that I don't have to feel bad about not having anything significant accomplished in life yet (though he did work for years in television writing as practice leading up to it), and
2. the first film he wrote the script for, the Italian heist After the Fox, was given an Indian remake in 2010, Tees Maar Khan.
3. (Incidentally, how do you spell "40" out? Forty? Fourty? They both look right yet somehow off...)

Looking into that, Tees Maar Khan, it turns out that it was written and directed by my favorite Bollywood director, Farah Khan!, and somehow I had never heard of it!

So I checked whether it was on Netflix, and it was, and I watched it- and I can tell you, well there's probably a reason why I'd never heard of it. in that it's not very good; though it's got a few interesting ideas and stuff not in the original film. And some pretty funny references for the more advanced student of Bollywood, and some digs at Slumdog Millionaire and M Night Shyamalan. Those were great.

Still, it's nice when these things that you'd somehow never come across before, present themselves to you.

This News

Alex Trebek is, just, an international treasure. Best of luck to 'im.

Sword Artifact Idea

Cursed sword that strikes down the righteous and innocent- finally destroyed in a forge, the blood of all its victims seeping out- the iron from that blood reforged into a blessed sword that strikes down the wicked and guilty. Maybe a bit too "high" fantasy to fit into TTDECBA, but still a neat idea that I've had for a while and realized I wasn't doing anything with so might as well use it as a post for the day.

5 Facts About Nutrition Off the Top of My Head

Tryptophan. Turkey doesn't contain that much tryptophan; it's some weird chemical reaction in your body between the tryptophan and the shocking amount of carbs you also consume at Thanksgiving that makes you so sleepy. Like, something to do with insulin levels or something? I tried making sense of that section of the wikipedia article and it was INTRICATE.

Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid- your body doesn't make it but it needs it in its diet in order for you not to die. Like lysine. I could go on this whole tangent about how much sense the lysine contingency in Jurassic Park doesn't make. Phenylketonurics (and I spelled that right first try somehow) are somehow allergic to phenylalanine, this essential protein thing; and so like I don't know how they don't die, maybe they just eat much less of it?, but there's a lot of phenylalanine in aspartame which is why soda warns phenylketonurics away from it.

Bromelain isn't acidic per se; it just breaks down proteins. The only known medical use for it is in removing dead cells from wounds. Pineapple is stinking delicious. 

Citric Acid. Vitamin C. Scurvy is bad news. I want to go on a tangent about the history of biscuits and hardtack. I want to go on a tangent about the freezing temperature of brine. In the book Treasure Island, when Jim is hiding in the apple barrel listening to the pirates, Long John Silver doesn't reach in there without looking, though that is a cool scene still and IIRC he still feels like eating an apple, he just never gets around to it? And now I want to go on a tangent about the provenience of many of the pirate "traditions" Stevenson made up for Treasure Island. And now I want to go on a tangent about pirates named Red Beard. How do I know so much about pirates. Cooking food removes much of its vitamin C content. I'm not sure how much vitamin C raw meat has, but it probably has any. Long John Silver doesn't have a peg for his missing leg, he goes around on crutches.

Monosodium Glutamate tastes terrible in Jello, at least when you mix it with unsweetened cocoa powder. The European classification number for MSG is E621. Niiiiiiice.

Newspaper Word Puzzle from My Dream

Pretend that the webcam didn't flip the image horizontally. 

The gist of it is, fill in the alphabet, snaking it around so that it's connected orthogonally, asterisks indicate warping points where one letter can jump to the other like there's a little tunnel there or something?, helpful for figuring out duplicate letters in the word??, and figure out the secret word of the day (in this case, PASSENGERS) by snaking letters into the circled squares. And bullets indicate inpenetrable walls you have to snake around.

Nightmarish In-Name-Only Treasure Island

Day 2 of never letting an opportunity pass me by: napping. A lot of napping. Also putting potato crisps into my tomato sandwich.

Continuing to track down films from my childhood for no real reason other than because I can (not letting any opportunities pass me by, yes.) I wrote down the details I could remember yesterday, after blogging for the day. 

I’ve got bizarrely specific memories of this- I could have sworn it was named Treasure Island, but it’s not listed among the list of adaptations. I think it was an anime, and an older one. Sort of like Tom Sawyer 2000, world of funny animals, but Treasure Island, but in name only. It’s not the legends of treasure island, but very similar. It’s not animal treasure island either; no human characters at all. Jim Hawkins is a cat, I think. He gets the map, but it doesn’t show where in the ocean the island even is, so Squire Trelawney says, “then we shall let the gods decide!” and throws a dart at a map of the world and they sail to that place and happen to get it right, the island happens to be right where the dart landed. At one point on the island they’re on a lake or river and there’s an “undertow” (not sure if that’s what they call it in the film or if it’s just my childhood understanding of the events) but it’s a living creature and Jim dives/gets pulled underwater by it, and gets to see the entire thing, which turns out to be some nightmarish anemone-like tentacle monster on the bottom of the lakebed. At the end of the movie, they never find the treasure and the island sinks into the sea and it’s incredibly depressing.

Found it! here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188249

Turns out it was The Legends of Treasure Island, but only kind of- in 1997 someone stuck the first three episodes together with the last episode of the first season, for some reason, and released that as a complete movie! It's called, just, Treasure Island, of course, just as I remember it, and... not everything's exactly as I remember it, the dart thing is slightly less ridiculous in context (but still pretty nonsensical and doesn't even matter in the end anyway.)

I remember the "have your guts for mincemeat" line, the "as the crow flies to the crossed palms" thing with the dead man's spyglass, and the stuff I listed, but the whole deal with the myst that takes away your memory I don't, heh, remember; maybe it was cut out of the film version (though going off of run time, it looks like the four 22-minute episodes just straight up got smashed together sans editing.)

Corndog Science Hour

Day 1 of never letting a single opportunity pass me by.

1. Watching the sun rise AND soaking in the hot tub
2. Writing down my dream
3. Painting some
4. Calling Personnel offices again at Walmart
5. Ripping a VHS tape
6. Wash the car
7. Seeing if anybody is home yet at the address where my phone was?
8. Cooking each corn dog a different way because there were four left and four methods of cooking instructed
9. Ripping a second VHS
10. Napping just now when I couldn't go to bed because I was waiting on the VHS tape
11. Blog about opportunities I didn't miss today
12. get the photos into here
    
    
    
    
    

New Vlog I Guess

[paste it here once it's uploaded]

pt III???

Everything's saying on the website itself that my application went through, but I haven't gotten an email saying as much, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I got an email when I failed it last time, but I  should also be getting an email succeeding, because that's what Personnel said over the phone when I tried to contact them the first time. I'd been going to call back today about it but I guess I didn't. 

Dilemma In Short

I should be making a vlog within the next couple of days but virtually nothing happened to me this month.

Assessment Battery pt II

Alright, so retaking the assessment yesterday, getting a new account with a different e-mail, filling in all the same forms the same way and everything (that's, what the personnel director suggested I do, when I called her wondering if she could somehow magic me into having the assessment un-failed, she suggested the best course would be to just try the assessment again under a different e-mail address) and I succeeded this time. Passed, I mean.

They go over applications on Tuesdays, from what I've gathered. But past that I really don't know what to expect.

Gosh, Do We Have Reason to Celebrate

I feel so creative at night. But any given thought is arbitrary, any one could be spun off or ran away with. I haven't been videoing as much as I should have (and I was going to say this into a camera but the battery's charging rn) because the world is too wonderful for me to try to put a little frame around it- but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try and share. And spending so long in the sun last summer really messed up my complexion. Have my ears also always been this red? I thought it would go away but it didn't. My beard looks much better trimmed- like, even looks really good now, whereas a few days ago I was considering just shaving the whole thing off.

Gosh, do we have reason to celebrate.

Cell Phone Detectives Saga- Maybe It's Not Stolen After All??

So it's something I realized recently (maybe yesterday?) but my phone seemingly having a new login on the 13th of last month, that wasn't someone logging into it on a different account because they found it and stole it and it's theirs now; that was me logging into my new laptop and counting as a new login across all my devices for some reason. I guess I realized that checking my email and seeing the login location as being the laptop, with the email sent the day the new login, which I'd thought had been my phone's, had registered.

But I'm not sure. Could check further into it.

Right so on that note, a few weeks ago I figured out that my phone wasn't misplaced anywhere at home at all, and had nothing to do with any of the suspects I'd mentioned, but had been taken somewhere after a Christmas pageant thing- for some reason. Tell you more if I ever find it...

Spit vs Polish

Figured I may as well get in a post today on this blog, though I'm far more interested right now in Pretzelize Me, Cap'n!. I learned a lot of weird and wonderful things today, but I'm not sure if I'm going to talk about them elsewhere in a more polished state, and I hate doing things like that redundantly, but I'm never satisfied with my level of polish, and so I never complete anything? And I don't like having the final say, in case I messed up somewhere, and I was able to publish so much project on my mission because hypothetically there was a buffer there in the form of my project supervisor(s) who'd give everything the once-over before things went to print. 

I realized today that heck I should at least be shooting stuff, under the knowledge that I'd have myself later as the buffer in the form of editor, but then I thought about how I'm never satisfied with the footage I got the first time around and go back and reshoot like everything and so it takes me forever anyway, and could I really be strictly an editor in my role as editor and get things done without extensive reshoots? That's the goal at least.

I could potential spend another half hour sweeping the cobwebs of the edges of the thoughts in this post, but I'm going to try to practice what I'm trying to preach, and just call this post good.

Assessment Battery

So I've been in the process of applying for a job at Wal-Mart because this overnight thing opened up which sounds ideal because who sleeps at night, right?; only I didn't say anything about it till now because, well one let's face it I've not been saying much of anything lately, but two, it seemed like such a shoe-in thing but not for certain so why bring it up early when you can wait if it actually comes true? And all this time it turns out that my application wasn't complete and there was this assessment I needed to take and I failed that today, so I wouldn't be able to reapply for another five months just as an automated system thing. In five months' time, of course, it won't matter.

And playing Super Mario Odyssey this evening and thinking about that, how maybe I can get someone to reset so I can take it again simultaneously also proving how dedicated I can be, Dad comes in and says how he doesn't want me playing video games all day for the rest of my life, living in my parent's metaphorical basement and working just at Wal-Mart when I could do so much better. And I was playing video games because like the Wal-Mart thing went south, and I don't want to make a career of Wal-Mart anyway I just really need a job, and night shifts how perfect is that?

And so I'm not sure whether I should request the assessment reset or whatever, because maybe not working at Wal-Mart would be a Good Thing, and it was a Good Thing that I failed the assessment?

(So the assessment is like this personality test, I guess seeing if the position you're applying for is a good fit for you?, and I fail personality tests just like in general as a general principle, even though  that shouldn't be possible because personality tests aren't pass/fail by definition.)

(Like, the assessment asked the same questions over again a bunch, and I'm pretty sure I gave polar opposite answers each time, because like, ????.)

(And like I'm sure probably if I did have a personality then I would totally know how to feel about all this, but I guess I don't.)

Game Overs

I dream in heists and sci-fi plots, and increasingly see life in terms of video game mechanics: I died dozens of times today, each failure on average carrying me further than the last, though only on average. The nevertheless frequent failures occurring in an area of the level that is well-trod and easy, those are more frustrating than the deaths at a more advanced and difficult zone, though the earlier failures be out of the way  more quickly. 

I had more to say on this theme, but I can't remember it right now.

Manmade Spams

There have been a few spammish comments on my blog recently but I'm not taking them down, because they're on a few old posts that I don't want anybody to be looking at anyway. Also because they're friendly.

Keep meaning to do a video a week no matter how bad, but then not because they're just so bad. Like yeah.

Getting to a point of popularity where I can be spammed on by perfect strangers, that didn't come from quality control. Came from putting up posts I thought were good at the time but now am so embarrassed by that I keep the spam on 'em.

So there's this guy on Twitter who's doing like fake AI writing, a human imitating how a computer imitates a human? So like Horse Ebooks, or Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash. And the future is just wild.

Dreams Are Fascinating and I Pity Anyone Who Thinks Otherwise

So I'm reading What If? by Randall Munroe, not the book but the website itself, and there's a question here about a giant hypothetical slope from one end of the country to the other, and... this all seems familiar. That was a dream that somebody had once, that I read about somewhere, but can't find out about because doing web searches for dreams just yields stupid dream symbolism stuff. 

But the parts I remember are this (could it have been my own dream once?): there's a giant slope, and people are riding bikes down it or something, just like in the What If, there's like a bike race or something... and there was something about, at first I was thinking a dog or a duck but the further I think about it it must have been a turtle, like a giant turtle, who can talk and is a vehicle or something, and something about needing to help its babies or something?, because it was a vehicle itself?, and, maybe it was my own dream, or maybe a friend's, I'm going to have to ask...

But man how great would it be if there were like a wiki of people's dreams, that you could search easily. Not magical or anything, just like, dreams famous people had and mentioned briefly in magazine articles or whatever, and then get stuck in your craw years after reading about them...

Cell Phone Story Maybe

Would you believe that I was like 12 seconds away from victory there? With the mission being, survive the onslaught for, however long. I'm going to try it again after this- and maybe a night of sleep as well...

So apparently it was only like last week that I got my major lead in the case of where my phone could have gone, based off of the fact that I didn't make a video last week but considered the topic. I'm no good at gauging time at all. Every so often I've been going onto my Google account and attempting to ping the location, like maybe magically the juice recharged or something?, but the login didn't work last time, so I had to look into it deeper. It looks like there was a new sign-in a month ago, hmm..., but attempting to call the phone yields no pickups, so I don't know what's up with that.

Didn't have location history turned on, but looking through my normal web history for that account, even just seeing what videos I watched on YouTube to see if I could spark a memory of my circumstances around my last seeing my phone, it turns out that the weather alerts come with GPS information attached, the precise location of the pertinent weather. This GPS information can get way accurate- down to the precise address.

The last weather alert was from the driveway of a house just a block down from the church. The phone was... well I don't know the story, but the last I saw it would have been around the meetings pertaining to the Christmas pageant. The address in particular isn't the home of a member of the church- but both houses neighboring are members'. So I'm going to poke in there and ask, before approaching the true address that it should be. Because I'm really not sure how something like that would have happened.

blogpost with many ??????s

My mom has been posting more than me this month and that's (with the idea that I'm "supposed" to blog every day and she's "supposed" to blog every week) a problem. But like so, maybe the problem is that once a day is too little?? With all the social media that I "should" be doing (and oh btw I've got a lead on the location of my two-months-missing cell phone but haven't told my mom yet because well I was gonna, almost did when I figured it out, called her over but she didn't come so I just sort of dropped the issue (this was like a week ago maybe? bad with gauging time)(oh man is it Feb already?, where did Jan go)) you'd figure it should be easy but well...

okay so like the thing I would blog about or whatever, that changes every 15 minutes, because the world is so big and wonderful that any conceivable thing could be worth spreading??? though actually I'm also very cynical of corporate interests???? and everyone's trying to get ahead which is just code for "get ahead at the expense of everyone else" but nonetheless I find everyone's struggles so eminently noble??????

and  I really feel like my pretzelize me cap'n could be so much more curated than this blog, which is also why I'm not posting there as much as I should because I'm not posting here as much as I should and it's tough to curate nothing.

Oreo

So I haven't posted in a week, which is all month, and I realize this, and I was just going to not post today either, but man midnight has been taking forever to get here, so I figured I may as well post right now anyway. I'm, well I've got all these ideas for videos or whatever, doing only one a week seems like I need to make it good or whatever, but which idea is best idea??, the one that's most recent... but I realized!! blog is good for daily thought.

Oreo the raccoon passed. :C

New Vlog

I didn't post yesterday because the clock in this room is like 7 minutes behind and it was past midnight so like whatever.

I've possibly told you about this blog before but Dan Wells is watching all of Babylon 5 for the first time and posting about it and I don't know what happened to his old blog but I guess it's gone man and ...? and he's gotten back to it for the first time in months so there's that (because Babylon 5 reasons)

http://discoveringbabylon5.blogspot.com/2019/01/episode-47-epiphanies.html

Brooding on War

I beat StarCraft 1 today, and am now on the Brood War expansion. After this, StarCraft II. But Brood War is a complete game to itself, with as many levels as the first game. It's called an expansion because... reasons, probably.

I'm on the second level, and I've figured out that the zerg are programmed to attack only once you construct a pylon- so I'm just harvesting all the minerals and vespene gas that I can before doing that. Pylons are what allow you to grow your population, so I'm just harvesting all with the four original worker probes that I started the level off with- it's slow going, but I can have the probes chugging away in the background while I watch Girls und Panzer in the foreground. 

It wouldn't be so bad to have the zerg attack or anything of course- but once they do then it's like... you have to be wary of attacks from then on. So this is just a strategy that I'm trying out.

Only the Crunchiest

Alex has a few more days left in his Crunchyroll trial, and so there's still a few days to-- well, okay, first of all, Crunchyroll is a streaming service that has a whole bunch of anime on it-- anime is Japanese cartoons-- Japan is this country in Asia-- dang I'm tired right now.

Even without a subscription you can watch episodes, just not new ones, and there's ads iirc. There's a new season of Mob Pyscho 100 and it is great and new eppies come out on Mondays which means a new episode came out today and it is great and. 

The books I have out weren't due for another couple of days but the library auto-renewed them today, early?, but now there's 0 renews left. I'll get around to those books after this trial thing is over and we can't get fresh anime anymore.

Further Twists in the Library Due Date Saga

Alright so looking at it it turns out that the DVDs WERE due when I thought they were but the library just, automatically renewed them for me. Like, oh dear, the check-out is about to expire, hold on there buddy I got that for ya. Which means that also, looking at it it appears that the library books also really were due when I thought they were, but it auto-renewed those for me as well. There's one more renewal on those books; better get around to actually reading them or whatever.

Further Adventures Brought to You by the Library

Cool so I had some DVDs I thought were due last week that I turned in on Thursday- but it turns out that they were due on Friday so I didn't turn them in late yay.

yeah life is fine how'bout u?

Even More Noteworthy Thing

It's a little early, and also a long ways off relatively, but it's definitely something on my mind, something relevant to today's events. Nothing changes faster than the future, there's nothing definitive and still just a thought, so I'm not sure whether to share... and I've got mixed feelings in other aspects of this too... but...

My brother-in-law won't be living here with us forever; in a few months' time they'll be off to school and stuff, and who knows from there. His work at the optometrist's office will thus leave a job opening, and talking about it today apparently I was brought up as a potential replacement, whether it would be a good fit for me and all.

Alright, let's just go over the mixed feelings. 

• I've never gotten a job through normal off-the-street go-to-a-job-interview processes, but always through nepotism of some form. I've noted this before, not entirely sure what I said about it then, but maybe there was something in there about maybe it's not meant for me to find work experience that way (connections are a huge important part of finding work, though maybe it's been a bit extreme in my case.) If I found a job at say Fox Peak Theatres, I'd probably lean at least some (if not a lot) on my sister as a reference- it would still be me gunning for that job myself.
• Also, with this distance out, and the expense put into it, this anchors me at home for, like, at least another year, this coming just a day after I write a bit about going back to schools somewheres. The only reason I talked about that and was thinking about that, though, is likewise nepotism, or that the subject had come up and tilted my hand.
• Mixed feel no 3: four or five months out still leaves me jobless up till then, and that's an awkward time-frame to gain temporary work for, going to a job knowing you can only be there a few months. Working afternoons/evenings at a movie theater, sort of part-time work that would still allow a day-time job eventually of working at an optometrist? That works.
• Also like I said, mixed feeling over whether to share this or not, because it's just a random tentative thing.

Anyway my fingertip under my nail is a bit tender from where it swelled up a little after petting those animals yesterday, so I don't want to write anymore.

Totally Random! Lulz (plus some genuinely noteworthy stuff)

I got to pet a cat today. Anda a dog. And there was one point where I was petting the cat with one hand AT THE SAME TIME AS I was petting the dog with the other. 

The technology available to us to be able to have like a grajillion tabs open at once, that's just fantabulous.

So anyway I'm looking into going back to school, like specifically film school? I have no money, but I'm also not in debt either, so no better time to become such! Dad informs me that UVU is supposed to have a good program, and I already love those guys, so...???

I wish that I had this energy in my videos, the same energy that I have in my head and am exhibiting now, bouncing from one topic to another. It's high up on my list of, ideal vision of what my videos look like.

Wednesday Jan 23

I'm not 100% sure why, but today felt really productive for some reason. I didn't spend all my time doing any one thing, but sort of spread my activities out over doing many things. I even played Starcraft for the first time this week, but only maybe half an hour of it. Also, prioritized. Didn't shunt my scripture study off till bedtime, but did it when I woke up so that that could be a part of my day. I'm also going to bed relatively early, instead of staying up all night procrastinating sleep!

My phone's probably in my room somewhere. I last thought it was in some pocket, then I went to bed, so, probably in my room somewhere.

Earth 51914

Today I've been doing a bunch of research on weird comic book trivia for no real reason other than to know it- going through a complete list of every designated reality in the Marvel multiverse; there are a lot but most of them only get passing mentions, and there's been a lot of media over the years wherein to make such mentions. You know those old Hostess snack cakes ads where Super Heroes fight criminals by tempting them with the delicious goodness of Hostess snack cakes? Spider-Man is dead in that reality, oh snap.

I'd been going to write more, but, man this is depressing; it really would have been nice to have been able to do more with my day.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go to the top of the mountain. And I have looked over.

And I have seen the promised.

(On) Arbitrary Conversations in my Head

Alright so I had a bunch of thoughts today that I didn't write down, random conversation snippets that came about as conversations because my thoughts were interrupted in the middle of the thing- were those worth writing down? Thinking about the appropriateness of neckbeards, noticing someone: "neckbeards are okay if-- who is that??" which leaves the other person desperately curious with a question of their own, "when are neckbeards ever okay?!" 

On fiddlers. The answer is on fiddlers. By the way.

And these conversations are fun, but so easy to generate they make themselves. And frankly super arbitrary. Is that thus still worth recording? 

There are also thoughts that play out so easily in my head because I go over the ground so frequently, need to express them out loud some time ever, which I can even whisper with great success but am not sure if I'd be able to replicate fully out loud and with a recording device noting my words. That seems a lot of work; do I even need to make note of them if they're so easily thought? Would a place to express them come organically, or would it be easier if they were written out to find places to put them?

So yeah just some more thinks about thoughts.

Not Enough Writing on Not Writing Enough

There's a lot that I don't blog here because I can write about it somewhere else, but then I don't write about it somewhere else either. There's a paradox there where the more locations I have to write down observations, the fewer observations I write down- probably also impacting my YouTubing.

Expect a new video next week I guess.

Although I Didn't Start Thinking in Portals, Tetris Effect Seeps into Reality

More and more frequently I'm thinking of reality in terms of video game graphics and mechanics- like, I only got a couple of hours of sleep last night and so my framerate is super low right now, that's how I think of it, I'm tired and my ping is super high. Playing League with a faulty connection, the game assets coming at you in non-real time and you just guessing the move you want to make based on old information but then the game flashes back to the reality of the situation and you weren't where you thought and you were attacking an enemy who wasn't really there and maybe you're dead but don't realize it, doing that then going back to the real world, time never works quite the same way after that, it's weird  that you can know of your own circumstances with certainty and it doesn't feel certain and at any moment you could actually be five minutes in the past.

And there's no saves in real life, no do overs. Though maybe we should actually act like there are. Maybe we should treat life in the experimental way that we do in games, like you just saved five seconds ago and now want to try something stupid, see if you can survive a frontal attack instead of sneaking around their defenses, it doesn't matter it's not like this is the real playthrough, you're just having fun. We need such boldness in our lives, such honesty.

But anyway yeah I've been playing so much Starcraft that I'm coming down with carpal tunnel and need to take a break. 

Duolingo Streak

Phew, just got my Duolingo for the day in, in the nick of time. I've been keeping it up for 79 days as of today, not missing a day since I started. I'm taking French and Russian: I've had French classes in High School but never really learned the conjugations; during college I did some Russian on Mango but can no longer remember my password for that. Almost plum forgot to do it for the day, but something somebody said on TV triggered a French word in my head, reminding me in time.

Musings on the Acquisition of Narrative Originality

Dan Olson's latest Twitch stream plays Vivendi's The Hobbit, which only a week or so ago I was searching around the web for let's plays of to refresh myself on how the lockpicking minigame went. I found what I was looking for, but there's a surprising dearth of material on the subject. So.

Thinking again about what makes stories original/creative, not in the worldbuilding or anything but in the tales themselves, the ideas they have and how they apply them (that's what reminded me to check in on Foldable Human, the reason he plays bad tie-in games, the unique quality that comes from nobody caring about the finished product.) Still no expert, it's a quest I doubt I'l ever reach the end of, but it seems to me right now: 

Super twisty plots could mean nothing; the only way to get the twists to mean something, when so much of the status quo is constantly being undone, is if the characters are placed in morally compromising situations/forced to choose in moral dilemmas. What they want being put at odds with what they need, is of course one way. 

The reason stories affect us (I think) is as reflections of our own lives, and sometimes, we flash back to those situations the characters are in, wondering what we would do.

Also what's the deal with EXPOSITION I'm trying to study the subject and seriously don't know. As setup for such story moments? But in a sense the story is the exposition itself, so...

The Killers - Land of the Free

Definitely their most political work to date. Getting a strong Jackson Browne Lives in the Balance-era vibe from it. And directed by Spike Lee, who knew. Thought it was worth sharing.

Slippery Slope

Season 3 of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events has apparently arrived, and I'm most of the way through, and it's the best of the three seasons I think. More dramatic, more funny, better visual effects. I've been meaning to rewatch Pirates 5 also on Netflix, to see if it's like as bad as I remember it or whatever, but Solo is on Netflix now and I love that movie, and it's a much better use of my time, but Piiiraaates... and what's the best use of my time, not just good or better? Probably not Netflix. 

I haven't arted any art in what feels like months. 

There's a lot that I want to change this year. 

Laptop Oofs

Oof. Adobe needs OS X 10.12 or later to run, like I've said, and I'm on OS X 10.10 like I've said, and the current version is 10.14 like I've said, and it's a free upgrade compatible with 10.8 or later like I've said... 2 gigs of memory, that works; 18.5 gigs of storage space, that works... but checking into it, doing a deep dive: hitting the little apple in the upper left corner, the first on the dropdown is "about this Mac..." this MacBook Air is from 2009, and it needs to be from 2012 or later according to the support website.

Oof.

2009!? That can't be right. I mean, I guess it can, but... Airs have been around for that long? 

January 23 2008. How about that.

Also I was expecting a DVD drive, but there's not one here. That's fine... I guess... The Amazon listing mentioned something about an optical drive. But whatever. If I wanted power, I could have went for an old Pro or an old not-Air; this is fine and I've somehow been genuinely calm about all of these disappointments.

Maybe it's still possible to get it to X 10.12, I mean, I don't need 10.14 or anything, just 10.12 but I'm going to have to do a deep dive as only the latest OS version is featured on the App Store...

In the meantime, iMovie is free I guess... FinalCutPro is $300, but that's cheaper than the Adobe suit in the long run...

Actually clicking on iMovie in the App Store, it needs 10.13 or later to run. double oof.

League works on this computer though at least. So there's that.

(The Creative Cloud App on Windows allows you to download and use old versions of the apps; I've been looking into that...)

Spot of Good News

Turns out those books I thought were due a couple of days ago are actually not due until the end of the month. 

Wooo.

Thoughts on Occupational Freedom

I passed my driver's license test two days ago, and like nothing's changed except for the fact that I haven't driven since then. I'm technically legally allowed to go drive places on my own, but there are never any cars at home and I don't have anywhere to drive anyway. I only seem to get anything productive done with my free time being limited; with my entire days open, as a deliberate choice, I'm taking in inputs a lot but saving all my outputs for when I won't be able to input as much, filtering it through some creative munching till then. This is my rationale, but it still feels like I'm accomplishing very little, and why would I ever change my habits; if I had a job I'd probably spend my downtime doing what I already do now, but I don't have any impetus to change. It's weird.

Meant to Drive to the Library Today

It's the tenth which means that I have books due today and I'd meant to renew them but forgot- libraries have websites, nowadays, only it turns out I've got no idea what my password is, so I'm trying desperately before midnight to enter in every password I've ever had but it only allows you to make five guesses at a time before locking you out for five minutes, and also the website does this weird thing where it does a soft reset every 30 seconds or so, so that your cursor jumps back to being in the username field instead of the password field. So, fun.

I'm Barely Dead

You know how I took the driver's test last month but failed and so we rescheduled it for today? And thus, you know how I took the driver's test today? And you know how you need at least an 80 to succeed? That's the score I got. And so...

It feels weird how non-weird this feels. Like I said, having a license is like death, because I've never done it before?

From here we can go in all sorts of directions. I still need gobs of practice, but I can legally do that on my own by now. But maybe, now that I can drive: jobs? And then money? And then as part of that: that camera lens, baby! I never explained why I want it so badly, but I got that laptop for Christmas instead, which (as spectacular and perfect as such a lens would be) is probably more necessary.

D.a?

The laptop arrived- D.a I think we'll call it, though I could still put it up to vote. I got confused during setup, and now system language is in French, and there are three user accounts having set up on it. English remains system manual of two of these user accounts. 3.1's hard drive is attached using External HDD Enclosure (which Instruction Manual style of English I'm writing with currently) (there's only one USB port) and it looked like I'd be able to use that the volume of 3.1 as the boot sector during startup-- in essentially having 3.1 on D.a, as of its OS. Restarting with this preference selected, nothing however happened, so I'm not sure if it really would work to do such necromancy. 

(Around) Exactly One Month Ago

I'm not entirely positive, but I'm pretty darn sure it was one month ago when I last saw my phone anywhere. Been trying to retrace my steps and thinking where I might have lost it- it was in my pocket, and then I woke up and looked for it and it wasn't in my pocket, but I figured okay it's just in a different pocket, and the phone's battery had run out by the time I realized it must have been lost lost.

So thinking about all the things that happened exactly a month ago. The seventh of december was quite an eventful day.

• mom's b-day
• smash bros ultimate came out; played a lot of that
• also the day the avengers trailer came out, maybe that's important

Not that I'm positive that it was the seventh that I misplaced it. For sure I had my phone on wednesday the fifth, because I didn't Instagram that day though definitely should have. (I haven't Instagrammed in over a whole month, but it's definitely not the longest stretch it's been, so that's alright.) I may also have had it on the eighth, which is the day I recorded my SpongeBob YouTube video. There was a lot of going back and forth, getting a lot of takes; I woke up early that day, spent a lot of time in the living room recording...

So yeah there are a lot of options, but I've been pretty thorough in my investigating them. It has been a month of searching. And I really don't know.

EDIT: It was actually the sixth that I recorded the SpongeBob thing; 18 years to the day after the Christmas special premiered. I thought it had premiered on the eighth when it had actually been the sixth, and so though I did record on the correct date, in my head that date was the 8th.

Another thing I misplaced is, I lost Kerrigan this evening playing Starcraft- not lost as in she died (the mission would have ended immediately had that happened); I just literally misplaced her. Our base was under attack and I needed to get her out of there, and I clicked her away to someplace, and... misplaced her. But that's fine, right, that I can't find her, because it's not as though I need to do anything with her after exterminating the Protoss-- what's that? I do need to do something with her at the end of the mission? Well nuts. 

(She was where I thought she might have been, in one of our Overlords. Must have clicked her into one in my panic. I figured as much, but finding the exact Overlord was a bit of a chore.)

Blizzards Lead to Slippery Slopes, Who Knew

Just, like, practicing driving a few days ago, Wednesday or Thursday, and parked outside the school while Dad grabbed something from the inside (come to think of it, not driving at the time, in the truck we'd driven to town in to pick up the car which was parked at DQ while Alex worked and anyway) sitting there suddenly feeling like playing Starcraft for no real reason, just a random jonesing to play this game I'd never played before in my life. I'd played Age of Empires and Empire Earth before, maybe a few more, and I've been researching a lot of RTSs lately for some reason, tracing the evolution of the genre and how it birthed other genres after it and deepdiving into the gamechangers that are woefully obscure anymore*, and I don't know how I got on this path but it's a fascinating one.

Starcrafts I and II being free-to-play now, to tie in with some remastered editions and stuff... And Kaellen saw that Starcraft was on Battlenet when it was open and asked if I played it; I might have forgotten about it if not for that. But I remembered, and I've gotten into it. Hard.

So yeah I've been investing a lot of my time lately cranking through the campaign modes both games; I'm on Zerg level three of the first one, playing a campaign through all three major races, and there's the Brood War expansion I need to play through before I reach even the second one.

And then maybe after that I've really been meaning to get into Heroes of the Storm, because its take on the MOBA genre is just mindbending, the things they do with it from what I've seen...

Most Certainly Not Life Lessons from Starcraft

I am just terrible at Starcraft and well I guess I'm learning from my mistakes but it's quite the investment to do so. Rolling with punches and getting back into it again even if that means going all the way back to the beginning and doing it all over again (and are we doing this, I thought we weren't doing this, my "life lessons from Starcraft" thing was going to be a different thing, switching the topic then.) I want to go write in my private journal now actually so see you later.

Timing of Ideation

My head is so full of ideas right now. Right now the priority is just to get them out, and then sort them later: all ideas seem like excellent ones if they remain in your head; those possessed of an idea are many, but you only hear of the lucky ones whose ideas were as good as they suspected. Best to be possessed of no single idea at all, give your ideas life by releasing them, allow new ones to grow inside you instead, and sorting out their respective qualities under the later tutelage of perspective. 

It's a tricky balancing act, timing its leavening, the point between your idea being nebulous and still full of potential, and your idea beginning to slip away like a dream. Record too soon, and you squash the idea of the unwritten potentials that would have grown in rumination. Record too late, and too many of its precious rose petals have fallen away into the steam. This may be a life skill just as important as the creativity itself, but I'm no expert on this idea, having only just discovered it myself.

Anyway the idea is about Starcraft and how they have schools in South Korea specifically teaching people how to play at high levels and that's so wild, are there classes on the history of the metagame, can you major in playing Protoss but minor in playing Zerg? Do they have intramural sports teams or do they just play Starcraft against each other some more but as sports this time? A good player can execute 200-300 commands in a minute. That's 5 a second. I can't even blink that fast (I mean that's hyperbole but you get the picture.) It may seem silly and trivial but it's people doing things at mind-bendingly high levels of skill, exactly what sports is meant to celebrate. And it's humbling to think about.

No ideas or anything connected to that, at least not of the creative type, but there might be a seed there, though the nature of these things is that there's no way of telling if our how it will germinate.

(Another thing about writing these down so early, sharing things like this at least, is that I don't know what I'm going to make a video about this week but just eliminated that as a candidate because it's no longer inside me begging to get out. I could still do a video on it, use those ideas and expend on them, but it's just one seed inside that apple.)

Construct Additional Pylons, I Guess?

The new microwave went kaput for no reason (government surveillance...!?) so Mom fiddled with the breakers and the microwave is de-kaput but the breakerage shut the computer off and when it turned back on it underwent automatic update and it's in the boat again in which it had been before the system reboot, which is ): but it still works and stuff. The D: is that I was halfway through a campaign game of Starcraft and had to restart because the computer shut down. I paused it while away, and wasn't around at the time of the shutdown because I was out practicing my driving.

My driver's test is one week from today. Dad's been forcing me to go out practicing driving in town with him every day so far this year. It's working; I'm learning a lot and getting more confident and stuff. Picking up quickly. (But am still being forced? What does this say of my work ethic, quick study but even things I enjoy I need extrinsic motivation? Idk just a rando thought.)

((Those are the only two things I've done today, Starcraft and driving. Not sure if that proves any points or whatever.))

Blog v. Video Hits

Alright so so far this year I've got a little over three hundred views, on this blog. 300 views in two days. Is there a way I can leverage this into YouTube views? Not from what I've seen, no. There is a very small click through rate on the videos I host, seeing as I see, both sides of the coin, the blog hits and the YouTube hits. The rate is basically zero. If there were any video hits from this blog, I know not of them.

This blog doesn't get that many hits, but it's still far more than my YouTube channel gets. (I've taken on, thinking about the channel in terms of a business. Though if I ever make money off of it, it will be years from now.) I almost have as many hits on this blog just over the past couple of days, that I've had over the entire length of my channel. It takes a while to build things up, of course; it's possible for my to be as prolific YouTubing as I am blogging, but that's not happening.

I could just make high-quality, engaging content, to up my viewer base (and/or to increase views embedded from blog,) but... I mean, I'm not planning not to, or anything, and I think my stuff is, decently, good... 

like I said, to justify the video format, what I've got to say needs to be more visuals-oriented. Requires planning. But the way my head works is like, if I write down the idea, then that "counts" already as being out in the world, even if nobody's going to see it. It's not that I lose motivation, but that I lose the urgency. Videos can't be urgent, they need to be planned. This blog is urgent, I do it every day. Maybe the editing is urgent, since it takes so long and I get it in so late, with the idea of getting in a video by the end of the week. But editing shouldn't feel like an urgent process.

(I don't know...?)

computer issues non-update

desktop: So the computer is, well there's this process and, well first off we got it working again, but the thing that you shouldn't click, got clicked, and reset the reset, so that we were back to the baseline, only, this time the system reset stops responding before it gets even one percent of the way through. Would go into detail if I remembered what anything was called.

Tl;dr nothing's changed, though something had it's back to the way it was.

Laptop: yep it's super dead. Trying to detach one board a from the other but the screw head was stripped, I could remove it by twisting but the connection between the two boards was delicate.

New laptop: Keanu Reeves????

Don't a know when a that's a gonna come.

1/2/19 UPDATE: desktop: now that I've it up in front of me: there's a popup that says sihost.exe - System Warning: Unknown Hard Error. That's what I was talking about. The only option out of it is to click OK. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you click OK. OK is death. We had the desktop working again and Kaellen clicked OK and we were in the same boat again with the desktop just not being there. I thought with the desktop up and rebooted, maybe it would be acceptable to click OK on that warning, but nope. Nope. Nope.

The reason the system reboot didn't work, the reason it froze at 1%, is because the system was already rebooted I guess? Because, I tried it this morning, (alright I just restarted the computer last night and gave up after I couldn't log in, but trying to log in this morning I remembered that you need to attempt a login first to this second useraccount that Kaellen tried making; (that useraccount is fake and you can't log into it, but you need to try to log into it and fail before you can successfully log into the main account: and then logging in should work)) logging in thus this morning and lo!: the desktop is up and working, though it took a few minutes for the taskbar to start working, and the start bar doesn't work if you try to click on it or hit the windows button.

laptop: the hard drive from 3.1 should be usable as an external drive on the new laptop coming. Ordering a, port converter thing from Amazon this morning.

new laptop: trying to learn the arrival date, looking on Amazon, order history, there's nothing there. What the-? It's under canceled orders for some reason. I figured it's because there was that other one from the other seller, which I accidentally added to the cart but might as well spring for the slightly-more-expensive-but-in-better-condition one, which we took out of the cart and that somehow counted as cancelling the order for the other one?, but that doesn't make sense; checking the confirmation email account it turns out the order really was cancelled... but only this morning. So ??? quite mysterious, quite mysterious. Ordered a different order of the same laptop, in the same order as the hard drive disk thing. Fingers crossed that this one doesn't cancel itself.